Domus - Inspiration

Sangath Group 6.

Our site is on the edge of the Kakadu national Park in the Northern Territory, so we had to design for tropical conditions, remote access, local traditions, sustainability and self sufficiency. Also, special consideration needs to be taken with the design to be consistent with the theme of the semester, that being minima.

After much research on tropical architecture the major points of consideration are,
1. Environmental conditions, large rainfall, high temperatures and humidity during the wet season and high temperature and no rain during the dry. Considerable chance of extreme weather from tropical storms
2. Reduced available construction materials, either from environment factors or availability or practicality.
3. A large body of work that inspiration could be taken from, not just from Northern Australia, but PNG, Indonesia, Malaysia and a number of other SE Asian nations. Both from tried and true construction to more contemporary techniques and materials.

Traditional Malayasian and Indonesian housing

Marika-Alderton House, Yirrakala, East Arnhem Land. Photos Glenn Murcutt.

Other inspirations for the project included the raised platform design of the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe. Not nessesarily

Plan - transformation

the first plan showed the basic room outline of the rooms, but in order to make more room, for comfort

we extended the entire building. to suit the requirment.

On the final plan, the bed rooms where oriented differenly to allow them to be more spacious, the wet area was organised to keep the water tank seperate from everything else.

Domus Model

Domus plan FINAL

site plan

Domus - Context Model construction

Domus - CAD Model

This Model was used in order to show the materiality of the building with contrast to the habitat(roughly) of Kakadu.

Domus ---- Research

This site was picked based on one main resource... water.
We decided to use the water in order to create power through hydroelectricity.

A micro hydro system usually consists of several elements including:

• A water intake (usually as part of a weir), which diverts the flow of the water source.
• Trash screens and fish screens (to remove rubbish and to ensure that fish cannot swim into the system)
• A penstock pipe (this allows the water to move from the intake to the turbine)
• A powerhouse (where the turbine generates the electricity)
• An outflow system (which allows the water to flow back into the water source)
• Electricity cables (usually beneath the ground or overhead cables).

this was an original idea for the building method but we then
thought it would be more practical to use standard building methods.

Domus drawings and sketches

Just a few  preliminary sketches of form vs surrounding landscape
One of the final elevations hand drawn
one of the final elevations 
a section also a final

Domus - S1 - L.Hart

Domus, Domus, Domus..............

Over the last week you could just feel your head pounding with it. Like a heart beat you lived and breathed it. The mad rush to make your final thoughts into something real consumes you as you devote your life to chatting with your team members about how to pull this off.

And then when you realise somethings not going to work your stomach hits the floor, then a voice from behind yells out the answer and you realise you're saved.
I think this whole teamwork thing is absolutely essential in architecture.

From my experience from working in an office, architecture is not about the ideas of 1 person but rather the input of many and i think there is no better way to bring a group of people together than a bit of pressure like a major project.

Personally looking back i thoroughly enjoyed the Domus project because it lets people administer their greatest strengths and when all those elements come together you get great team work (and a poster :-)

My strengths have been the images above, 3d computer rendering and the likes but if i didn't have my 2 team mates, it may never have looked as good as i think it does.
To add to this i would never have been able to create the physical model as accurately as it came out by myself. It required a team effort

Although the response from our adjudicators on our project was not as wonderful as we had hoped, we still created something that is our own as a team and i believe that was half the lesson

- Linton Hart

Minima - 2008 - L.Hart

Tablinum 2008 - L.Hart

Quondong Fruit

In our research during the design process our desert house ‘The Walpiri House’ we found different type of plants and trees that provided food. One being the Quondong fruit as seen on the image above.
We created an oasis within our house providing colourful desert plants as the ‘desert pea’ with bright red flowers shown in the image below.

Desert Pea

Our desert house has a water badder that stores our rain water and is removed once the rain season is over. Once the bladder is removed we have a fire place centered in the middle of our the oasis, which was inspired by the aboriginal fire called ‘dream fire’.

Dream fire

Our final much controversial model “The Walpiri house’.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my team mates Joel and Adriano, as it was much fun working with you guys. I feel like I have learnt from both of you and hope to work with you both sometime again in the future.

DOMUS- S1

So above are our posters... and here are my thoughts

Aynur and Linton were an absolute pleasure to work with. Each one of us contributed heavily and evenly to Domus depending on our strongest skills. This group unlike others I’ve worked with in the past, handed things with a great level of maturity. We were able to critic and question each other’s ideas to extremes without falling apart and finally compromise and come up with a solution that pleased everyone.

We are all individuals and have different perceptions of the world and with each other we were able to express that. At times push came to shove and I’m glad to see I’m not hated for it. It was all in love of friendship and Domus! Our efforts were tremendous especially in the last week. We fell in love with our model, we put her together with such care. So even thought we were hit hard by our assessors, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed every moment I spent with you guys piecing Domus together, I’ve learned a great deal from my beautiful teammates and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. We are proud.